Academy Award Winner Juliette Binoche

The world's oldest profession still has its secrets.

The most provocative film at this year's Toronto and Berlin Film Festivals, Elles stars Academy Award- winner Juliette Binoche as Anne, a well-off Parisian journalist investigating the lives of two student prostitutes (Joanna Kulig and Anaïs Demoustier) for a magazine article. What begins as a routine assignment, though, quickly turns personal, as Anne is drawn into the lives of these fiercely independent young women and forced to confront her own physical needs and desires.

The fourth feature by acclaimed Polish filmmaker Malgoska Szumowska (33 Scenes of Life), Elles was co-written by Szumowska and Tine Byrckel, a journalist and psychoanalyst. With help from French documentarian Hélène de Crécy, they interviewed young female prostitutes in both France and Poland and — as Byrckel later noted — “met young women who were far more proud and casual than we'd imagined.”